Potential Hub One wifi issue with Nest Thermostats?

[#1]

Hello all,

This may or may not be a real issue, but I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

We have three Nest Learning Thermostats and three Nest Outdoor Cameras.  One of the cameras is connected to a powerline wifi extender, and goes offline from time to time.

In order to investigate further I've set up NEMS network monitoring on a Raspberry Pi device - this is set up to ping each device in our home network every 5 minutes.  I was surprised to see that the Nest Learning Thermostats are sometimes showing as "host down" and sometimes showing as "flapping" (between up and down).  When I try pinging from my laptop, I get "request timed out", but other times it works, with the ping time anywhere between 50ms and 500ms.  This is the only indication that something may be amiss - the Nest app and the thermostats themselves are not showing any issues.

Two of the thermostats are on the 5GHz band, and the one nearest the router (only 3-4 metres away, through an open door) seems to be the worst for dropping out (according to the network monitoring).

The router is a Plusnet Hub One, firmware version 4.7.5.1.83.8.263, with 5GHz and 2.4GHz synced, i.e. using the same SSID.

I wondered whether the thermostats are going to "sleep" periodically, e.g. polling the wifi at specific intervals.  I posted about this on the Nest community forums, and they suggested that this is not normal behaviour.  I tried disabling the 5GHz band to force them to connect to the 2.4GHz band, and it didn't appear to make any difference.

I will also try unsyncing the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and give the 5GHz band a different SSID, to see whether this makes a difference.

As I said earlier, there is no apparent problem in the operation of the thermostats other than the ping tests failing, but I'm just curious about the network flapping, especially as Nest Support said it shouldn't happen.

I'm also wondering whether the 5GHz issue (Hub One - 5GHz WiFi issue - Plusnet Community) has anything to do with it.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Mike

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike,

I'd suggest it's entirely normal behaviour, contrary to what you have been told over on the Nest forums. I have two Nest learning thermostats and they work perfectly when connected to a Hub One. Pinging one of them just now resulted in what you see below. 

When the device began responding, it was because I pressed the panel on the front of the thermostat to wake it up:

>ping -t 192.168.1.18

Pinging 192.168.1.18 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.157: Destination host unreachable.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=323ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=192ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=113ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=277ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=154ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=281ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.18: bytes=32 time=225ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.18:
    Packets: Sent = 35, Received = 28, Lost = 7 (20% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 17ms, Maximum = 323ms, Average = 170ms

Regarding the 5GHz problem you have linked to: I have just pushed a fix to your router to rule that out. You'll need to power the router off/back-on at your side to apply it.

[#3]

Brilliant - thanks very much for confirming my suspicions.  And thanks for updating my router firmware!

Mike